DeAcended
by C.W. Smith
Summary: Scenes and Ideas that didn't make the final cut for the Ascension series.


De-ascended  
Scenes and Ideas that may or may not make it

Scene cut from Chapter 4  
The 1st Terran Fleet

* * *

Harry met Major Castleman on the port flight deck as his team was going over the vipers and their berths. Harry pulled out a pad he had put together as a way of maintaining contact with Lily if he was off ship. He also used it as a datapad so he could look over what was were. He was toying with an idea he had had in the garage after his companion had left. He walked over to the Major and addressed him.

"Major, how many people do you think survived out there in total?" Harry asked.

The major turned towards him, the hard mistrusting look still on his face from the day before. "Caprica had a population of several billion before the bombing. Caprica City alone house seven million."

"And we've only pickup up around two thousand people, and that's before we take into account the other colony worlds," Harry said. He was going to have to make a hard choice.

"I don't care how much you expand the inside of this tin can of yours. We can't possibly supply more then what we have so far," Castleman said.

Harry nodded, "Not with the facilities on board _Ascension_, no."

An eyebrow was raised, "What are you thinking?"

Harry walked towards a Viper and ran his hand along it's hull. He turned to the Major and said, "So far we've saved every bit of history and literature we can. We've got the world room and hydroponic gardens being setup all over the ship in order to supplement our life-support. Hopefully we'll have a feasible set of oxygen gardens and vegetables within a few months. But even then it's going to take time. Plants need time to grow, people need time to heal, and a civilization needs hope in these dark times.

"When I was a school child, I was told it isn't our abilities that define us, but the choices we make. My choice is clear in this, we've only been planning on how to get one ship out of here. We've never considered the possibility of building more."

The Major gave him a condescending look, "It takes months, years to build a space worthy craft."

Harry nodded in acknowledgment, "When using human workers yes. We have a lack of time and manpower. So this is what we are going to do. We're going to get as many people on this planet as we can here. I'm going to ward the area so the Cylons can't find it. This will become our staging ground on Caprica. We're going to go to every one of the Colonies and see who we can save. I'm going to work with Lily and several members of your squadron and see who is stranded out in space and try to get them to safety. We can do this. We can save more then just a couple thousand. But to do it I need your help.

"Will you help me save your people?"

The Major took a moment, then snapped to attention and saluted, "Yes sir."

It was a start.

* * *

Harry warded the area around the base. He went to all the shuttles, Raptors, and Vipers and made sure each one was able to find the base. After he had placed all the protections he could on the base, to include a Fidelus charm that every pilot was keyed into he sent them out to gather all the people from Caprica. With Lily's help he came up with a way to "grow" extra ships. The first one was similar in design to a battlestar, capable of launching vipers and taking in refugees. He named it the _Excalibur. _Every ship had it's own central consciousness like Lily. And like Lily they were all for the most part the souls of their ships. He had traveled with his small crew, which now included Captain Rose Evans at the helm, to the other colonies. He'd ward a staging area and start on the growth of ships while the Colonials would gather the survivors within the protections he had placed. During this time, Harry had come face to face with Cylon Centurions on multiple occasions. It was then he had found and captured two people who would turn out to be Cylons. One declared it was a model three, the other a four. Harry didn't kill them though. He was not a Colonial so he did not deal with them the same way the colonials would. He provided them with food and water, and held them in a newly grown brig on the _Excalibur. _What he learned from them was compelling, though they seemed unrepentant.

The Three especially seemed especially standoffish and aggressive to Harry. The Four, Simon, at least stated it's refusals in a calm and logical manner. When Harry asked him to tell him about the Cylons in general he learned that they had developed the organic bodies as infiltrators. There were twelve models of them. And the part that really disturbed Harry was that when they died their minds were transferred into a new body on board a Cylon ship.

He shared that knowledge with his crew and the Major. The Major was not happy. "Why didn't Lily detect that we were bringing Cylons in here?"

Lily answered immediately, "We took samples and ran them through my primary database. At first glance both our Cylon prisoners appear completely human along Colonial base-line. Even running a detailed scan showed no difference. It was only during a very detailed genetic analysis that I was able to detect the synthetic nature of the DNA. It would require more processing time then we have available to do such scans and still be anywhere near efficient."

Harry didn't speak anymore on the subject. As far as he was concerned the Cylons were prisoners of war and would be treated as Earth would treat them. He wasn't military, or even a representative of any government, but he wasn't going to ignore the laws of war. Lily had a copy of the Geneva Conventions in her database, and that was what Harry was going to be guided by.

He especially wasn't willing to execute the prisoners due to what they had told him. When the Major pointed out that they were probably lying Harry said, "Maybe, but I'd rather not take the chance that they aren't."

The Major accepted that reasoning. Harry looked at his ever present datapad and said, "We're almost ready. A year of preparation and it's about to pay off."

"With the fleet we've built we could almost take the fight to the Cylons," Major Castleman mentioned.

Harry shook his head, "Even if that were the case, the colonies aren't capable of supporting much life anymore. Remember when we tried to save people from Picon? The Cylons didn't just nuke the major cities, they glassed the entire planet. Even with the breakdown of the radiation over time Caprica won't be really habitable for a millennium. We've held off the radiation sickness as much as we can, but the Cylons are for the most part immune to it. We'll marshal the fleet, and try to catchup with whatever survivors may have left the system during the Fall."

Chief Tellus asked, "So what are we going to call ourselves Commander?"

Harry just smirked, "The First Terran fleet of course."

Harry let the Chief and the Major get back to their duties and turned to the three people who at times were rather close advisors. He looked at each of them and sat down in his command chair. After a moment of thought he said, "This does pose the question though. If the Cylons have human form models of themselves, how many of our refugees are Cylons?"

Cavil, Rose, and Leoben all shared a look, if he only knew. Rose took one for the trio and said, "It could be anyone of us. And that's assuming we'd even know we're Cylons, for all any of us knows, we could be sleepers just waiting for the right trigger."

Harry sighed, "What are the chances we could broker a peace between us and the Cylons? We leave and never come back and they just leave us be?"

"The underlying directive of any force dedicated to the genocide of a race is to remove it from existence. Statistically it is unwise to assume that a peace of any kind can be achieved. It's also wise to assume that, instead of respecting any peace treaty, they will simply wait until you lead them to Earth and then proceed with the extermination of all life on the planet," John answered.

Harry had a lost look in his eyes for a moment, "I can't believe I'm fighting this war again. It's Voldemort and the Death Eaters all over again. Why is there always someone who thinks that they have a right to cleanse the world, galaxy, whatever of everything they don't think has a right to survive? Not pure enough. Not perfect enough. I had so hoped that people out here were so much more enlightened then back home."

"You thought a computer evolved intelligence would be different?" Leoben asked.

"Lily is, though it does prove something I've wondered about."

"And what might that be," Cavil asked.

"It proves that the Cylons are being motivated by emotions, not only logic. Biology, no matter how manufactured, plays its part," Harry said.

Harry got up and started to leave but before he did he said, "Makes you wonder though. If the Cylons want to exterminate humanity, why did they take human form?"

–

It went on like that. Harry would join the fight as they were gathering more supplies before leaving, giving the hydroponic oxygen gardens have more time to flourish and their food crops a chance to be harvested before taking off. They had everything possible and even then had found a group of survivors near Caprica City. Harry however earned his title among the Colonials as the Lord of Terra. His magic would race across the battlefield, tearing up the ground and turning it into elemental golems that would strike against the Centurions. He'd kill the human forms he faced with his magic, never striking with dark magic that would taint his soul but he had taken their lives. He consoled himself by saying that it didn't matter, they would just be rebooted into a new body.

He was starting to feel the same bone weary fatigue he had during the Second Voldemort War. He didn't come out all this way to take part in a fight for the lives of a civilization. He would spend hours alone in his quarters meditating. When he did sleep the old nightmares started coming back. The faces of the dead condemning him for his failure to save them. Only now they were joined by the voices of an entire race damning him.

He felt lost, his ethereal companion only able to lift some of the burden from his shoulders. Never enough though. He became much more vicious in battle, spells blurring as they left his wands. He told himself that soon they would be on their way, but he knew they'd be fighting for every light-year. This war was going to stretch across the galaxy, and he couldn't help but think he would drag an unprepared world into it. He had hoped to keep earth neutral, uninvolved, but he himself couldn't standby while these people suffered.

It was one group they found from Caprica City that changed everything.

–

Harry was escorting Captain Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, Karl "Helo" Agathon, and a Cylon that identified itself as a Model Eight named Sharron around the _Ascension_. Helo had vouched for Sharron and frankly that was good enough for Harry. Major Castleman wasn't so sure and kept his hand on his sidearm. Harry was curious, "I'm surprised we didn't find you on one of the sweeps we've been making of Caprica over the last year, Lt. Agathon."

"We've been on the run, not staying in one place for too long. Spent a good portion in Caprica City," Helo answered.

Harry nodded, "Even with the _Ascension's _sensors it's been difficult to track down people. The Cylons, Centurions and Human-forms, all register on them as life signs. I've been working with Lily to try to filter them out, but it's difficult. The Human-forms in particular are indistinguishable from Colonial-baseline."

Kara spoke, "You're talking like Doctor Baltar."

"Who?"

"Gaiues Baltar, rather famous scientist before the fall?" Kara said back as if Harry should have heard of him.

"I think I've heard him mentioned once or twice. Hasn't been really that important though.

* * *

Author's Notes: This scene was cut mostly because I decided it might not work out so well. Harry saving millions instead of a few thousand. It takes away from the desperation, the fear of the extinction of humanity if he saves so frakking many of these folks. Also, eventually Harry would have discovered that the bridge crew he put together were all cylons and that would have lead to him getting pissed and hunting down a 2 and them beating the crap out of eachother. Harry would end up knocked out of his funk when the two in question would refer to him as "The Flight of Death" leading Harry to see what he had become.

It might be compelling, but I just don't like the idea of Harry spending so much time on Caprica. It end up being until Starbuck shows up several months to a year later. I just can't see him being able to put off heading back home for so long. Back to his family.

I have other ideas, some fantastical, some depressing, and a few with more religious connotations. If they work they'll be in the main story. If not they'll be here.


End file.
